Pope Lambasts Trump Over Family Migrant Separation Policy
Pope Francis has condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the Mexican border, saying populism is not the solution to the world’s immigration problems.
“It’s not easy, but populism is not the solution,” Francis said on Sunday night.
In an interview granted to Reuters by the pope, The Papacy frowns extensively at President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, in which U.S. authorities plan to criminally prosecute all immigrants caught crossing the Mexican border illegally, holding adults in jail while their children are sent to government shelters.
The policy has caused an outcry in the United States and has been condemned widely as videos emerged of youngsters held in concrete-floored enclosures and an audio of wailing children went viral.
U.S. Catholic bishops have joined other religious leaders in the United States in condemning the policy.
“I am on the side of the bishops’ conference,” the pope said, referring to two statements from U.S. bishops this month.
“Let it be clear that in these things, I respect (the position of) the bishops conference.”
Francis’ comments increased the pressure on Trump over his immigration policy.
The pope heads a church which has 1.3 billion members worldwide and is the largest Christian denomination in the United States.
The president has vehemently defended his administration’s actions and blamed the family separations on Democrats.
“Democrats are the problem,” Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants.”
The U.S. crackdown chimes with a new political mood sweeping western Europe over the large numbers of migrants and asylum-seekers, most of them escaping conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
The pope said populists were “creating psychosis” on the issue of immigration, even as aging societies like Europe faced “a great demographic winter” and needed more immigrants.
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